


You raise me up

by naivesilver



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Families of Choice, Family Feels, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 12:20:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9181339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naivesilver/pseuds/naivesilver
Summary: Credence can’t call Queenie Mommy, or Ma, or Mom, but that makes no difference.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by one of mamaluciscaelum's awesome drawings. Look her up on Tumblr, you won't regret it!

The first mother Credence remembers is Mommy, and he doesn’t know anything about her.

The memories he has of her are blurry, and they will fade while the years pass, but he clings to some fragments, fragments that will keep him sane many times in the future: her smile, her laughter, the softness of her shoulder when she’s holding him and he’s too tired to keep his head up.

He can’t say much about Mommy, but he knows she loves him, and that’s enough.

At least until she’s gone.

 

 

After Mommy comes Ma, but she’s not a mother. At least, Credence doesn’t consider her that for long.

He tries to love her. Oh, _God,_ he tries. Honor your father and your mother, the Bible says, and so he keeps on trying, because not doing such would be a sin, and he’s afraid of sin. Ma makes him pay greatly for his sins, every day.

That’s when he stops calling her mother, at least in his mind. When he’s crying in his bed, back sore from her punishments, or giving leaflets to strangers, clutching them with the tips of his fingers so that the blood coming from his palms doesn’t stain them, his brain screams against her, calling her _Mary Lou_ or _Devil_ or _monster_ , _monster_ , _monster_.

That’s why when Ma tries to lay a hand on Modesty he is the one who turns into a monster.

Since she’s not his mother, it’s not a sin to stop her.

 

 

His third mother is Queenie Goldstein, and she’s the strangest mother one could ever get.

Credence doesn’t call her Mother, or Mommy, or Ma. It would be strange, since she’s not much older than him. But that doesn’t stop him from loving her, or vice versa.

Not only Queenie cares about him, but she can _read minds_. She can detect his feelings, even when he doesn’t speak, even when his body language is too controlled to betray him. She knows when he doesn’t want to be touched, and in those moments she keeps her distance, waiting for the right time to envelope him in one of those hugs where she pours so much love that Credence feels on the verge of crying. She sees when he’s not in the mood for talking to anyone, and she respects that (she also asks him to try to speak up, sometimes, especially when he’s bottling up so many problems that he’s about to burst. She says that it would help him as much as those around him, and he believes her).

She’s the one who holds him one night, after guilt and pain have jerked him awake, her arms wrapped around a thin body wrecked by sobs while he cries for what he’s done, and when he asks, not daring to look up at her,  why she’s not afraid of him, of a _monster_ like him, Queenie kisses the top of his head with a kindness he’s not used to and whispers: - Oh, honey, don’t you think that I’d see it, if you were anything less than human?

She’s the one he writes long letters to, when he accompanies Newt in his travels. He writes to other people, too, but it’s Queenie who receives all those pages where Credence pours all his insecurities and questions, and she answers all of them seriously, and asks for news regularly.

 

_Do you think Mr Scamander sees me just as a creature to study?_

_Until he starts talking to you as if you were a puppy even though you’re taller than him, don’t worry, he remembers you’re a person._

_I miss Mister Graves._

_Thankfully, if his thoughts are any indication, he misses you too. I’ll invite both of you over for dinner when you come home._

(She really invites them: she also looks utterly proud of herself once she reads their minds after they withdrawn in another room to “speak privately”).

 

_Say, Credence, how is Newt?_

_He stares longingly out of windows and rereads Tina’s letters every day. Also, I haven’t seen Leta’s photograph in weeks. Get Tina a dress, I think there’ll be a wedding soon._

And ultimately, Queenie is the one who walks him home after a visit to the tailor’s workshop, both of them laughing at Credence’s amazement at what magic tailors can do ( getting clothes ready in the space of an half hour is awesome, after all), her arm hooked in his and her blonde head sometimes casually leaning on his shoulder like it’s the most natural thing in the world. They’re in a wizard-and-witches only alley and it’s raining, and so they project up an invisible umbrella, and it’s Credence who does it, because nobody is repressing him and he feels good, so good.

Credence can’t call Queenie Mommy, or Ma, or Mom, but that makes no difference. She’s there for him, and she’s kind, and she loves him for what he is, and that’s enough.

That’s what a mother does for her son.


End file.
